Are you really living your life?
Posted on April 23, 2019 by Scott Sterling, One of Thousands of Executive Coaches on Noomii.
Is the life that you are living one that you have chosen, or have you simply stuck to a path that was charted for you?
ARE YOU REALLY LIVING YOUR LIFE?
Seems like a simple question, right? Most of us tend to read this question with an emphasis on the word “really”, and we feel appropriately challenged to consider whether or not we are getting the most out of the life we have chosen. We read or hear about someone dying too young, with so much left undone, and wonder if our lives have become too pedestrian. Are we “really” living on purpose or just going through the motions? These are valuable and important questions to ask.
But I want to challenge you to consider the question a little differently. Focus instead on the word “your”. I have noticed that more often than not, the reason we are not really living is that much of what we would consider the foundation of our lives was never our choice to begin with. Think about it . . . from the earliest years of your life, choices about who you are and what path you should follow were made for you by people whom we assume (if we give them the benefit of the doubt) had your best interests in mind. But these people were viewing life though their own lens of experience which, at best, was still their lens and not yours and at worst, was misguided because they had their own issues that you couldn’t possibly know about. When we’re young, we do what our parents, older siblings, teachers, coaches, etc. tell us to do because we want to be accepted and loved. It’s built into our DNA. Our original ancestors had to be part of a pack or tribe to survive, and survival meant following the rules and accepting the beliefs of others without question.
But we’re not fighting for survival anymore (unless you consider losing your iPhone for a day on par with getting eaten by a saber-toothed tiger). And while it still benefits us to have the protection of the tribe when we are very young, the real problem stems from the fact that as we “mature” into adults we seldom if ever question the core beliefs and fears that were smeared all over us as trusting children. Beliefs such as: living in fear of an angry, vengeful, God who will punish you if you don’t pray or live a certain way; or that going to college and taking on an enormous amount of debt will make you successful; or that you can’t make a living doing what you really love to do . . . or even that the only way to be successful is to work hard.
As adults, our logical minds tell us that to accept all of this as absolute truth is clearly nonsense. An angry, jealous God sounds more like you and me than it does a deity. There are as many examples of individuals who achieved a lifetime of success and prosperity without a college degree (e.g. Steve Jobs, Ellen DeGeneres, Mark Zuckerberg) as those who did. And working really hard at the wrong things won’t bring you success any more than driving your car fast toward LA will get you to New York City any quicker. It will only leave you frustrated and out of gas. So why don’t we challenge any of these beliefs, even when we are convinced that they don’t serve us? It’s not the beliefs themselves that cause us so much angst and unhappiness in our lives, it’s the FEAR of challenging these beliefs that holds us back, no matter how absurd and outdated they may seem. But as the renowned American Psychiatrist Karl Menninger once said “Fears are educated into us and can, if we wish, be educated out of us”.
Bronnie Ware was a palliative care nurse in Australia who took the time to interview patients in their final years, days and hours of their lives to find out what, if anything, they would have done differently. In her book, The Top 5 Regrets of the Dying, she explains one of her most profound discoveries:
“Of all the regrets and lessons shared with me as I sat beside their beds, the regret of
not having lived a life true to themselves was the most common one of all. It was also
the one that caused the most frustration, as the client’s realisation (sic) came too late”
She goes on to say that this regret was always attributed to fear, and not having the courage to risk disappointing others or letting them down.
So, I encourage you to consider the question again . . . Are you really living YOUR life? Do you wake up every day excited (and perhaps a bit nervous) because you are living a life that reflects who YOU are and what you really believe? Do you have the courage to question what doesn’t make sense to you, even though others will pressure you to just accept things as they are? In short, is your life authentic, or are you just going through the motions in a life that was chosen for you without you even realizing it?
Your life is far too precious to allow someone else to map it out for you. We can all expect to have some regrets when we reflect upon life during our final days (assuming we even get that opportunity). But let’s at least heed the advice from the honest people in Bronnie Ware’s book and make sure that one of those regrets is not that we settled for someone else’s definition of a happy, meaningful life.
